Additives are commonly sold in combination with bottled water. Currently marketed examples include energy, or health, drinks, where the additive is provided in solution form. Other examples include a medication where the bottled water is supplied simply as a convenience for washing down a pill or a capsule.
In particular instances involving nutritional supplements, however, it is useful to supply the supplement in solid dosage form, similar to the medication example. Doing so improves the shelf stability of a natural active ingredient, and particularly one of a biological derivation, which might otherwise degrade or lose potency over time when in dissolution.
In contrast with the medication circumstance, however, the water is not just a convenience for administering the dosage. It is also a measured amount of ingredient required for the best metabolic results. Therefore, the means for combining the two components into a single package is an important aspect of the product put-up.
The art is replete with bottled liquid products where some adjunct product is packaged in or on the bottle closure. Alternatively, the bottle itself might play a dual role in the packaging by providing an exterior location for attachment purposes. Most bottles for bottled liquid products are fabricated by molding. The molding technology lends itself to creating cavities, or recesses, in the sidewalls or bottom to provide a nesting location for the adjunct component.
In the case of blow-molded bottles, which are typically used for bottled water products, a natural recess is provided at the bottom where the parison is stubbed off. The parison is the preform tube which is expanded into the shape provided by a female mold by blowing air, or another gas, through an open end called a gate. A protruding gate vestige is left on the bottom where a concavity recesses it out of the way. This recess might provide a handy location for storing a solid dosage preparation.
Solid dosage preparations placed on the exterior recessed bottom of open-topped drinking cups or tumblers are known in the art. U.S. Patent Application 2004/0149598 to Scarla, for example, attaches a breath freshener to the bottom of a disposable cup, such as a STARBUCKS™ coffee cup. In U.S. Pat. No. 1,798,339 to Soulis, a tablet, or a powder composition in a pouch is attached to the raised bottom of a paper cup. These containers, however, while temporarily filled for drinking, do not contain the liquid product, in the sense of put-up packaging. Even if they were to be transformed into a shelf package by means of filling and applying a sealing closure, they provide little physical, and no safety, protection for the solid dosage component, not to mention failing to provide self-stability for the liquid component.
Sealed-closure bottled liquid products, where an adjunct component is conveyed therewith at or near the bottom, are also known. In U.S. Patent Application 2005/0284792 to Gopinathan, a multi-component migraine kit is stored in a separate container comprising a false bottom to a water bottle. In U.S. Patent Application 2004/0262173 to Buesching, a medication is provided in an end-cap which is press-fit to the posterior of a bottle containing a liquid, such as water. An additional container is required, however, in each of these cases. The additional container represents increased cost and assembly complication. Furthermore, the accompanying product is unprotected with regard to tampering. Still furthermore, the product, in its location underneath the bottle, is not always visible to the consumer of the product.
The prior art is silent regarding the use of an already-existing concavity in most water bottles for the simplified concomitant conveyance of a solid dosage preparation in a way that provides both tamper safety and physical protection for the preparation, and in a manner that places the preparation in full view for verification by the user.